Throne Hunters Book 3, Chapter 37

Harald came to a stop behind an ancient oak that grew in a small park located across the main avenue from Count Gorkin’s manor house. The thick clouds of sunset had begun to shred and tear, revealing expanses of deep night, but the moon was yet hidden, and the world consequently cast in gloom.

Lamp lighters had been diligent in this part of town, and the length of Gustav Avenue was lit by steady flames encased in glass, so that islands of yellowed warmth bathed the broad sidewalks, their penumbral edges overlapping. Pedestrians were never in less than an adumbrate glow.

The occasional fine carriage rumbled by, drawn by teams of matching horses. Young lords no doubt en route to assignations, or well-to-do families returning home after visiting a popular salon.

The small pocket park was dark and still and cold. Harald found that he couldn’t get his breathing to slow. He stared at the manor house where it hulked behind the high walls that encircled its gardens, and sensed, knew, that his friends lay trapped within.

The walls were tall and thick, easily eighteen feet in height and more fitting for a castle than a genteel urban estate. Guards were stationed along its length, with teams patrolling.

The gate itself was cast in the ornate manner of all popular homes in the Angelic Quarter, but despite the curlicues and shaped ivy leaves pressed in black iron upon the bars, there was no mistaking the gate for what it was: a veritable obstacle for anything less than an army fitted with a battering ram.

And beyond it? A broad crowd of guards stood at rough attention, clad in black armor and bristling with spears. They were a professional crew, not Red Fist, but clearly had been standing there for hours. Ordered, no doubt, to give Harald a warm welcome.

From the looks of it there had to be some forty or so men thusly arrayed.

Harald took his time examining everything. The gatehouses were hidden within the property, beyond the gate proper, and were massive stubby towers of thick stone. The manor house was a good fifty yards beyond, huge and broad, built in the style of a castle, complete with crenellated tops and two towers flanking it on either end. Occasionally, a patrol with hounds would pass behind the massed rankings of men beyond the gate.

Say there were forty professional mercenaries up front, the Ebon Wolves from Marheim. That meant just as many along the walls, and say another forty patrolling the grounds proper. Then another force guarding the front door, and who knew how many stationed within, including possibly the Red Fist and Gorkin’s pet Silver-ranked raider, Fosso.

A hundred and fifty, say, or maybe even two hundred elite guards and soldiers, all awaiting his surrender?

Harald drew a shaky breath.

This was madness.

Rank and utter madness.

But what choice did he have? Gorkin would break his vow in a heartbeat, laugh in his face once he’d surrendered and parade him before Anna.

No.

This was his only hope, impossible as it felt.

But perhaps he could tip the odds in his favor.

Nervous, he checked his stats:

Strength: 13

Dexterity: 13

Constitution: 14

Then, taking a deep breath, Harald drew forth the two Horizon’s Whispers as well as the additional scales he would need. He held them in his palm, studied their wondrous, fluted forms, then summoned his scale count.

Scales: 793,064 / 1,000,000

And closing his fist, he absorbed the needed scales into his Cosmos.

Oh, wonder. Oh, glory.

He sank briefly down, down into the depths, and behind him streamed plumes of prismatic light.

Awash with power, he swam down into that eternal ocean and there saw the Fallen Angel, her form static and dead, lit by the billions of pinpricks that were her many scales. In her palms he saw her Throne of Harmony gleaming with golden light, and in her wings, obfuscated but alive, her Throne of Shadows.

Shadowpaw was there, and Wirmas. The Aureate Master hung in the air to one side, the Goldchops on the other. And if he pressed it with his attention, he knew he could reveal the Demon Seed, that dark nucleus of horror and power.

But instead he extended his palms toward the Fallen Angel’s frame, and channeled the sublime power of the twin Horizon’s Whispers. Glimmering light streamed forth like an endless cascade of wonder, and flowed down into the constellations of scales.

The Fallen Angel awoke.

She stirred, her vast frame rippling, and raised her face to the invisible skies. Her wings beat slowly as if she sought to rise from these depths, and the Throne of Harmony in her palms and the Throne of Shadows in her wings blazed. They filled with power, and then overflowed, and the surfeit of scales poured into the third Throne, the one best suited to his needs, which came alive in her heart, shining forth with terrible brightness: the Throne of War.

Harald felt it Ascend, and felt himself in turn consumed by the rushing roar of raw might.

The Fallen Angel’s wings beat one last time, then stilled. She bowed her face to the depths, and gazed in sorrow at nothingness once more.

But the three Thrones remained brilliant, with the third Throne the brightest of them all.

They were his.

Three Thrones of power. His to draw on, his to use, his to wield.

Harald opened his eyes, returned to the darkness of the small park, and summoned Shadowpaw and Wirmas.

Both appeared just behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at them and nodded. “Our only goal is to free my friends. Do what you must and as you think best to accomplish that task. Nothing else matters.”

Shadowpaw lay low on the ground, belly to the dirt, ears flattened. For once Wirmas only inclined his head in mock servility.

Harald summoned the Goldchops.

Three hatchets appeared about him. One on each flank, as before, but a third now before him, identical to the other two, heavy and fat, the gold glimmering in the distant lantern light.

Harald checked his stats:

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 15

Constitution: 14

He’d known that the added hatchet wouldn’t increase the stat bonus, but still, some wild and desperate part of him had hoped it would.

Grimly excited, he summoned the Aureate Master. The thick golden band appeared just above his elbow, snug and perfectly shaped to his arm, and he immediately felt the power of the Goldchops double.

Strength: 17

Dexterity: 17

Constitution: 14

His frame grew dense with perilous strength, his musculature feeling lethal and heavy, but perfectly suited to what he must do. He felt feverish with the need for action, to rise and run, to race across the avenue to engage with his foes, but he wasn’t done yet.

Dark Vigor.

The black, insubstantial flames raced across his being, immolating him where he crouched, and he inhaled deeply as he sought to master the rapid increase in physical puissance.

Strength: 19

Dexterity: 19

Constitution: 16

Oh, yes. Almost he felt ready. But this wasn’t enough. Even with this terrible power, enough to push him far beyond the abilities of any natural warrior, making him even the equal of a Silver-ranked raider, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Not against two hundred elite soldiers.

He needed more.

Hands shaking, he opened the pack that he’d set by his feet. The pack in which he’d been carrying something whose very presence made him recoil.

The Helm of Wrath.

Harald raised the heavy, crude helmet, and regarded the thick, rusted iron with a combination of desperation, horror, and raw need. Its faceplate was shaped into the visage of a snarling hobgoblin, and heavy straps hung from its sides that would no doubt bind it tightly to its wearer.

Trying to delay the very second he must place it upon his head and sink the hundreds of little spikes that lined its interior into his own scalp, he summoned again its description.

Artifact Acquired: Helm of Wrath
Quality: Uncommon

Special Ability: Wrathful Might

Activation: When donned, the helm grants the wearer terrible strength and induces a state of berserker rage, greatly enhancing combat effectiveness at the cost of rational thought. In this state, all attacks deal increased damage, but strategic decisions become impossible.

+5 to Strength
+3 Constitution

Limitation: The wearer cannot remove the helm while in a berserker rage unless subdued or knocked unconscious. Prolonged use risks permanent reduction of intelligence.

He looked past it, then, at Gorkin Manor. Thought of his friends, of Anna, of what he must do to reach them, to free them.

And prayed with the utmost sincerity and fervor that when he reached them, something, someone, would intercede to stop him from doing them harm.

With that prayer on his lips, he pulled the helmet over his head, and jammed it down tight.

His scalp burned bright with pain as it was pierced all over, and at the same time the Aureate Master on his arm grew searingly hot.

Strength: 29

Dexterity: 19

Constitution: 22

Flames washed over his form, sank through his skin, scorched him down to his bones. His muscles warped as they layered, grew massive, sheathed him in impossible, unnatural strength. His bones strained and flexed as they grew denser, and his joints popped as his armor tore across his back, split over his arms.

Too much.

Harald couldn’t breathe. The world swam before his eyes as a terrible pounding filled his ears, a rushing, racing beat that he dimly realized was his heart, pounding so fast, so terrifically fast, that he felt it must explode.

But from within that storm of power, that crashing madness of magic, arose a bloody-minded locus of need, an overriding passion, a horrific instinct to destroy everything that might dare oppose him, that thought it could stand in his path.

Instead of instilling fear and wariness in Harald, the sight of those forty massed soldiers were a joy, a liberating source of ecstasy and glory.

For a moment it was all Harald could do to pant, hunched over, hands flexing and knotting up and releasing, so strong was his passion, his desire.

He was paralyzed by the knowledge that in a second, at any moment, he could dive into that wave of flesh and bathe in its gore.

Trembling with delirious joy, Harald threw back his head and screamed.

Everyone across the avenue stilled and stared.

The trinity of Goldchops shivered.

Harald sprinted forth so quickly that the balls of his feet barely touched the ground. He flew across the avenue as the Dawnblade whipped back and forth in his fist, and somewhere Shadowpaw bayed, the sound pure terror on the streets of Flutic. People screamed, pedestrians dropping into crouches and covering their heads. A carriage driver sawed at the reins and caused his pair of horses to storm off the street, carriages wheels jouncing up off the sidewalk curb, horses screaming as they collided with the Gorkin estate wall and bounced off to topple over, gold-trimmed wooden siding shattering as traces and horses and driver crashed to the ground.

Harald ran right at the gate. Madness had him by the throat. He was still screaming, and the men were glancing at each other, stepping back, all forty of them giving ground before his approach, bewildered, not understanding what Harald meant to do.

Harald crossed his arms at the last before his head, forming an "X”, and slammed right into the iron bars.

The whole structure, the entire ton of reinforced iron and bars shrieked as the hinges tore free of the walls and the bars bent. The webbing of curlicued and ornate metal bent around Harald and then burst, hinges the size of lockboxes tearing from the wall and Harald bore the whole gate forward.

The Ebon Wolves screamed as the gate fell across their front ranks. Harald felt savage joy at the thought of crushing a dozen of them right there and then, but a hirsute man with a porcine face at the very front roared and caught the very upper edge of the gate, stopped its fall cold with unearthly strength of his own.

Harald raced up the now inclined gate, his impossible Dexterity allowing him to sprint up a single bar, right at where the ugly soldier was somehow keeping the gate aloft, its upper edge along his clavicles, his fellows scrambling, scuttling away, but Harald didn’t stop, he ran right at the man and kicked him square in the head.

Which burst into fragments as his neck tore and his whole body gave way, the gate collapsing to the ground and pinning his corpse as Harald leaped free.

The trinity of Goldchops flew forward, spinning with abandon to seek out their prey, and Shadowpaw was a shadow of justice as he leaped to attack from behind Harald, baying again.

Shouts.

Screams from all around the property.

Oh, thought Harald. There’s more of them. Many, many more.

He grinned ferally and threw himself at the closest knot of men.

A shimmering shield of faint crimson light appeared before him, someone’s Passive, but Harald screamed and shattered it with a downward swipe of the Abyssally Attuned Dawnblade.

Aching Depths was all around him, empowerd by the three Thrones, turning the air to the chilling heart of the abyss, and Harald willed three Abyssal Grasps to snake out and find prey, to start feeding him stolen vitality, life energy torn right from the souls of his foes.

Most of it went straight into his Umbral Aegis which stole shadows from all around, crafting them into shadowed plates of exalted protection.

The Ebon Wolves were no cowards. Some inherent martial discipline caused them to gather, to face him, to roar their own cries of defiance and charge.

Harald met them head on, swiping the Dawnblade across two blades and shattering them, the sheer strength of his swipe causing wrists and arms to break, then he was amidst them, headbutting one through his helm so that the architecture of his face collapsed, grabbing another by the chest and crushing his cuirass, iron deforming beneath his fingers and collapsing his sternum.

A bolt of power slammed across him, lifted him off the ground and he flew sidelong into three men, all of them dropping to the ground.

No pain.

Nothing but glee.

Harald rolled over, crushing his foes as he went with elbow digs, then rose right into a fist that crashed across his face like the swinging boom of storm-tossed ship. His head rocked around but he came right back with a punch to the inside of the man’s knee that detonated his leg, grabbed him by the throat and squeezed so that blood fountained everywhere as his head tore free.

Harald spun, saw men coming at him and unleashed a Demonic Edge that cleaved right through their ranks, lopping off legs and splitting torsos.

Arrows began to thwip down around him so he leaped away, his sheer strength causing him to sail up and back as if hurled by a giant to land a good dozen yards back amidst shocked guards.

Pandemonium.

Screams, bellowed commands, and all was swirling blades. Some caught Harald, slashed across his armored self, skittering off his arms, cracking him in the back, but he felt nothing, and thrusting his fist into his scale pouch he fought one-armed, his Dawnblade little more than a hammer with which he beat his foes back, each parry resulting in a shattered blade, a wrenched arm, a dislocated shoulder for his foes.

A woman in gold-trimmed black plate screamed a challenge and he turned to face her just as her whole body went whoomph and went up in golden flames, her eyes bright pits of hell, her sword weeping fire as she screamed his name and came running.

Harald laughed, readying himself, but a Goldchop came out of nowhere and slammed into her head, bursting it like a lantern-soaked blazing melon so that she went over sideways, feet up, body parallel to the ground and Harald burst forward, caught her by one ankle and spun, wielding her like a burning club with which he hammered another man right off the ground.

Horns were blowing.

A svelte-looking warrior threw down a complex puzzle of interlocking steel and wood which blossomed instantly into a man-sized automaton, cunningly wrought and with blades for fists, its eyes pure white.

“Slay him, Barocles,” shouted the man, and the golem leaped at Harald who ducked his first blade and surged up to slam a fist across the golem’s head.

Ironwood.

The golem’s head rocked to the side, features slurrying under the force of the blow, and Harald punched him again and again and again, Barocles staggering back, unable to react, rocking on his heels as his head collapsed.

Harald ducked under his arm, wrapped both of his own around his chest and neck, and hugging the golem tight, spun just as another Ebon Wolf hurled a bolt of pure sizzling electricity at him.

The bolt took Barocles in the back, causing the golem to spasm and shiver violently, and Harald hurled him into another mass of Wolves just as the construct detonated in a ball of black and white flames, sending people flying off their feet.

Text filled Harald’s vision, but he snarled and swiped it away, causing it to disappear.

The Goldchops were everywhere, trisecting the battlefield, and already the ground underfoot was muddy with blood and body parts.

More. He needed to kill more, and quicker.

Darting back, Harald seized the top of the huge iron gate.

He pulled, aware that even this fleeting second would cost him, but the iron gave, dragged free of broken masonry, and Harald spun even as arrows fell about him, one slamming into his back, and with a cry he tore the huge gate up, the iron bars massive and unstoppable once he got them swinging. Up and around, the metal warping under his grip, and then he loosed and the whole gate flew from his hands to go spinning and scything through a dozen men and women, crushing and crumping them and shattering bones.

Fist in his scale pouch, absorbing more, feeling no pain, screaming still, Harald smacked aside a descending axe, shouldered the assailant so hard his chest stove in like a stomped-on crate, and broke for the manor house.

Everyone was converging on him.

“Fucking madness!” someone was screaming. “It’s just one bloody man, stop him, stop him you fucking useless idiots!”

A spear thrust at his face, and Harald swayed aside, grasped the haft, punched the spear in twain, took his broke end and slammed it into the woman’s face, imploding her jaw.

Movement, everyone converging on him, and Harald drew his dagger, ducked under a slash, lifted up to hammer the knife all the way home to the hilt through the top of someone else’s helm.

Their eyes went wide with shock but Harald moved on, left them standing there. An organized phalanx of spear-wielding warriors came at him, points leveled, but Harald simply leaped over them, springing like a deer as they tried to raise their spearheads to track his ascent. But then he was over them, down on the grass, turning to punch and kick and demolish them, their bodies so delicate, so frail, giving way to each blow as if they were made of straw.

Something hit him then, something serious. The Aegis shattered as he was lifted off his feet and hurled through the night, to hit the ground, roll, bounce, spin out and come to a stop face-down in the grass.

For a second it was all he could do to blink and gasp, but the three Abyssal Grasps kept dumping life force into his Abilities, and his Aegis reknit itself of its own accord as more arrows began to rain down, bouncing off him, sinking deep into the earth about his head and shoulders.

Scales.

He shoved a hand into his pouch and absorbed the last of what there was.

Sweet blessed energy.

The Wolves were converging on him, wary now, and a number of them hurled spears from point-blank range, the weapons slamming into his Aegis, cracking it even as it reknit itself.

But then the Goldchops flew through their ranks and they could do nothing but scream and topple and collapse.

Harald rose, shaking, feverish, his strength causing his blood to boil, and he broke into a sprint again, heading toward the front door of the manor.

Lanterns had been lit, everything was blazing bright, and as he left the darkened garden before the estate he felt Shadow Fortitude grow weaker, losing the deep dark all around him from which it had been drawing deep succor.

No matter.

Harald screamed and spread his arms wide as he charged up the gravel driveway, the mass of packed Red Fists and Ebon Wolves flinching, many of them with crossbows up, and then the triple Goldchops flew past Harald, faster even than he could sprint, and he leaped just as the front rank loosed their bolts.

Quarrels flew under him as Harald speared through the air, flung as if from a ballista, and he crashed down amidst the armored foes like a thunderbolt, coming down so hard the stone steps split under him, cratering and deforming.

Harald tackled a man around the waist and drove him through the crowd, plowing through the massed ranks to slam into a stone pillar. The man jellied as Harald smashed the pillar in half, pieces of arms and chest dividing and going different directions as the huge portico overhead groaned and sagged. Harald tripped, staggered, came up and took a jet of boiling water straight to the head.

His feet went out from under him, his Aegis faceplate turning opaque as he flew back before the unceasing torrent, and was blasted across the floor into the wall and there pinned by the powerful flow.

Spears flew into him, bolts, magical assaults, and he felt the Aegis grow thin, its essence burned away by the searing water, but then Shadowpaw bayed and the massed Wolves and Red Fists quailed and the torrent faltered just enough that Harald rose to his feet, turned, and slammed his shoulder into the wall.

Which gave way before him, huge blocks laid down by master architects centuries ago shattering and sliding into the room beyond. Harald scrambled and crawling through into what might have been a parlor, spacious, well-appointed, a fireplace blazing, three Red Fists in the double doorway that led to the entrance hall beyond.

They turned and stared at him with abject terror.

Harald rose, grasped a stone block the size of a small chest, and threw it overhand so that it simply took out the central Red Fist like a wooden bat might a tooth, a mist of red and they were simply gone.

Shouts, screams, orders, people running upstairs, people swarming in through the hole in the wall, the windows shattering as guards forced their way in.

The Dawnblade, where had he dropped - ?

Harald seized a circular wooden table, slapped the legs off, and hurled it like an oversized discus at a window, causing the frame and planks and the Wolf coming through to explode.

“Out of the way!” A stern voice, all eager authority, and a Red Fist entered, a lion of a man, someone he’d seen somewhere before.

Harald bared his teeth, blood dripping off him everywhere, and ran at the commander.

Who filled the doorway, red plate armor materializing around him even as a ghostly halberd appeared by his side.

“You face Jacek Firio -” began the man, voice booming, but then Harald threw himself into a tackle and it was on.

Umbral Aegis slammed into red mystical plate armor like twin boulders crashing into each other, and Jacek was driven back, unhurt but off-balance. The halberd swung down with an unearthly shriek to cleave Harald’s head off. But twin Goldchops appeared in its path, hafts crossed to block it cold.

Harald tore the frame off the doorway, a huge beam of wood which he shattered over Jacek’s helmed head, knocking the man back again, and followed up with punches to his chest, each sending spiderwebbing cracks across the crimson cuirass.

People were on the huge stairway, others crowding in the front door, but Harald ignored them. He screamed and wrapped his arm around Jacek’s waist and lifted him clear off the ground.

It took effort, as if the armor were magnetized, attracted with supernatural strength to the ground, but up he came, Jacek screaming as something in his legs tore. Harald ran across the hall and slammed into the wall where a full-sized portrait of a vulpine idiot smiled condescendingly down at him.

Portrait, wall hanging, and masonry shattered as the pair of them crashed into another elegant room in which harps, upright pianos, violins, and other instruments were set up all around on stands.

Blocks of stone collapsed around them as Jacek hammered his elbow again and again into Harald’s back, shattering the Aegis until Harald flung the man from him.

Jacek flew through a huge harp, strings sproinging loose, hit the wall with such force that it crunched and cratered and bounced off right into Harald’s fist.

Harald drove the man back, screaming as he slammed his fists again and again and again into the man’s armor, crumpling and cracking it as Jacek bounced again and again off the wall. Now, Jacek’s commanding roar had become a cry of panic as he simply couldn’t escape Harald’s endless blows. He raised his forearms to cover his ruined faceplate but it was no good.

Strength 29.

Harald shattered the mystical armor, shattered Jacek’s forearms, shattered his chest, then gripped his cuirass and tore it away, exposing the man’s tunic-clad chest. He slammed both hand down upon his shoulders, dug his fingers around his clavicles and tore them free.

Jacek’s scream went up a register but then a Goldchop flew over Harald’s shoulder and split his head in twain.

Text filled his vision, but again Harald felt nothing but impatience and dismissed it.

He spun, feral, gasping, feeling two victims of his Abyssal Grasp die and for a moment the endless flood of power diminished, only for the Grasp to lock on to new victims and Harald laughed and ran at the doorway where Red Fist guards fell over each other to get away.

As Harald emerged into the entrance, a small young woman clad in Ebon Wolf black held up her hand, a silver signet ring gleaming like a star, and said quite clearly: “Instantio.”

Harald froze in place, locked like a specimen behind glass.

The young woman allowed herself a quiet smile. Her hair was ink black and cut in a fringe across her brow, her features elfin, her manner elegant and self-contained.

“There,” she said, her voice ringing out clearly. “Now, if someone will slide a blade into his eye -”

Shadowpaw slammed into her from behind like a runaway carriage, a tidal wave of fur and talons, his huge maw closing sideways on her head and shattering her skull so that brains and eyes burst out just before his fangs could clamp shut and then Harald was free.

He seized an ornate chair from where it was placed against the wall and hurled it at two guards who were fleeing down the hall, so that it knocked them off their feet. There. A suit of ceremonial plate armor on a stand complete with a blade set point down between its feet. Three steps and he had the sword, and with it he leaped again at the doorway, batting aside crossbow quarrels as they flew at him, and back outside where the last of the Ebon Wolves fell over themselves to get away.

Harald was like a fox in a henhouse, leaping from side to side, swinging and cutting open foes wherever he could. Each hit sent a pulse of power into him, and he rode one man down the steps to bury his head in the ground before leaping back up to catch a woman by the arm and swing her off her feet and around, her shoulder liquefying before he swung her sidelong into a pillar and wrapped her around it.

Goldchops flew to and fro, and screams were coming from all sides, but now also from the ground where the wounded lay.

Out in the gardens’ darkness, knots of guards stood irresolute, gripping at each other, expressions slack with horror, waiting to see which of their number would lead the charge toward the house.

None did, and then the first broke and ran toward the ruined gate and the rest turned and fled after them. And just like that, the morale of the vaunted Ebon Wolves broke and they streamed away from the house to leave Harald staggering and swaying and searching for a new victim even as the Goldchops sank again and again to silence the wounded until nothing was left alive to contest his will.

Heaving for breath, wanting more, needing more, Harald hesitated, poised to sprint out over the grass and run down the fleeing guards, to go out into the street and kill whomever he found, to go from house to house until something managed to stop him, hours or days from now.

But a voice called to him from within the house.

“Ho, little man.”

Harald turned slowly, all of him dripping gore, and looked through the broken front entrance at the grand staircase down which a huge man was slowly descending.

“Ho, little man. My name is Fosso.” The man’s voice was complacent, assured, pleased. “My name is Fosso, and mark my words, I am going to eat you alive.”